Tag: policy

China’s Long March 2C rocket launches “disaster reduction” satellite

7:30 pm

China today used its Long March 2C rocket to place what it called a “disaster reduction” satellite into orbit, launching from its Taiyuan spaceport in the interior of China.

No other information was released, including whether the rocket’s lower stages landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

54 SpaceX
32 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 62 to 32, and the entire world combined 62 to 53, while SpaceX by itself still leads the world (excluding American companies) 54 to 53.

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NOAA lifts many restrictions on the release of commercial Earth observation images

3:09 pm

As part of a 2020 revision by Commerce to reduce regulations on satellites that monitor the Earth, NOAA has now lifted many of the restrictions it placed on the release of high resolution commercial Earth observation images.

NOAA said it lifted 39 restrictions on an unspecified number of licenses. Those restrictions include a reduction of global imaging restrictions for certain imaging modes and removal of restrictions on non-Earth imaging and rapid revisit. It also removed all temporary conditions on X-band synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imagery.

One of the companies that benefits from the removal of the conditions is SAR imaging company Umbra. The company announced Aug. 7 that, with the removal of the conditions, it can now offer SAR images to customers at a resolution of 16 centimeters, compared to no better than 25 centimeters under the old license conditions. “This means that we are finally able to offer customers the highest resolution images that our satellites are capable of capturing, setting the stage for even further expansion of products to customers,” said Gabe Dominocielo, Umbra’s co-founder and president, in a company statement.

The revision to the regulations, put in place in 2020, had been instigated by the Trump administration, and has apparently been left untouched by the Biden administration, at least up until now.

For the satellite companies it means they are much freer to produce that best imagery, and thus compete more successfully. For customers, it means that they will now have access the best imagery, in open competition. For news outlets attempting to report on things like the Ukraine War, for example, this ability will make it possible to improve the accuracy of the coverage.

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Real pushback: Judge slams Southwest Airlines for violating settlement terms of free-speech court case

1:38 pm

Southwest: Enemy to free speech

Bring a gun to a knife fight: We now come to another chapter in the continuing saga of flight attendant Charlene Carter, who was fired in 2017 by Southwest Airlines because she had expressed opinions that were not liked by both the company and union officials. In 2022 a jury awarded her $5.1 million against the airline and the union.

In December 2022 the federal judge in the case, Brantley Starr, reduced the settlement award to $810,000 in order “to comply with federal limits on punitive damages.” However, he also approved the rest of the jury award, which required Southwest to rehire Carter as well as change its policies that violated the first amendment, and announce these facts publicly to its employees.

Only a month later Carter went back to court, demanding that the judge sanction Southwest for violating settlement terms of her court victory. Not only did the company not admit error to its employees, as required by the settlement, one company-wide memo slandered Carter again, calling her previous communications for which she was fired as “inappropriate, harassing, and offensive.”

Judge Starr yesterday responded to Carter’s demand for relief, slamming Southwest in no uncertain terms.
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Scientists repeat fusion power experiment that produced more energy than spent

10:03 am

For the second time ever, scientists have successfully produced more energy from a fusion power experiment than they spent running the experiment.

Physicists have since the 1950s sought to harness the fusion reaction that powers the sun, but until December no group had been able to produce more energy from the reaction than it consumes — a condition also known as ignition.

Researchers at the federal Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California, who achieved ignition for the first time last year, repeated the breakthrough in an experiment on July 30 that produced a higher energy output than in December, according to three people with knowledge of the preliminary results.

Before you start buying stock in fusion power or believe the glowing praises coming from politicians and government bureaucrats, be warned: This experiment, which cost billions, was only able to produce enough power to run a household iron for about an hour. It will likely take many more billions and decades more of research to scale it up to a viable power system that has any hope of being practical.

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Rocket Factory Augsburg raises $33 million in private investment capital

8:59 am

The German startup Rocket Factory Augsburg revealed today that it has raised $32.9 million in private investment capital at the same time it has shifted the launch date for the first rocket launch of its RFA-1 rocket from this year into next.

That launch was scheduled to occur at the Shetland spaceport, Saxavord, and as recently as April 2023 officials there were saying that this launch would occur this year. In June however Rocket Factory signed a deal with France’s space agency to use its long abandoned launchpad in French Guiana. That same month I predicted the launch at Saxavord would not happen this year, possibly because of regulatory hurdles in the United Kingdom.

It appears those hurdles might have been part of the reason for Rocket Factory’s deal with France. It needs a place to launch, and it appears the UK’s government is not presently conducive to allowing such things to happen easily.

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Boeing delays first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024

4:21 pm

Because of both parachute and wiring issues in its Starliner capsule, Boeing revealed today that it is delaying the first manned Starliner flight again, until March of 2024, so that it has time to change and test the parachutes as well as remove the flammable tape inside the capsule.

The company had been hoping to finally fly that first manned flight last month, but was forced to cancel when in June it discovered two shocking problems. First the connections between the parachutes and the capsule were too weak, and second, for some reason engineers had used tape to protect the capsule’s wiring that was too flammable and had to be replaced or covered somehow.

Boeing is taking the tape off in places where it’s easy and safe to do so and considering other remediation techniques, such as protective barriers or coatings over it, in trickier spots, Nappi said.

The parachute work is multifaceted as well. For example, Boeing has modified the soft link design to make it stronger, and the new version is being manufactured now, Nappi said. The company also decided to swap out Starliner’s parachute system, putting a new version slated for the first operational mission on board for [the crew flight test]. The new soft links will be incorporated into the new chutes, which will get to strut their stuff during a drop test soon. “We expect that the drop test will occur in mid to late November,” Nappi said. “That’s what the planning indicates at this point, and we’ll watch that closely.”

The seemingly endless number of mistakes and bad engineering that we have seen during the development of Starliner speaks very badly of Boeing in almost every way possible. These last two problems are especially egregious. Neither should have ever happened, and if so should never had been unnoticed until a mere month before launch and years into the project.

It must also be noted that March ’24 is merely a target date. Don’t bet the house on it happening then.

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Russia launches new GPS-type Glonass satellite

4:02 pm

Russia today used its Soyuz-2 rocket to place a new GPS-type Glonass satellite into orbit, lifting off from its Plesetsk spaceport in the northern Russian.

Apparently this launch resulted in its lower stages falling in areas in Russia not normally used as a drop zone. No word on whether they landed near habitable areas.

The leaders in the 2023 launch race:

53 SpaceX (with a launch planned for tonight, live stream here.)
31 China
10 Russia
6 Rocket Lab
6 India

American private enterprise still leads China in successful launches 61 to 31, and the entire world combined 61 to 52, while SpaceX by itself leads the world (excluding American companies) 53 to 52.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Chase bank politically cancels the accounts of several doctors, their families, and their employees

1:06 pm

JP Morgan Chase: eager to blacklist you for your opinions

They’re coming for you next: Continuing what increasingly appears to be its bank policy, JP Morgan Chase bank suddenly and without warning or reason recently canceled the bank accounts of several doctors, their families, and their employees, apparently because these doctors don’t abide by the lockdown policies and medical health advice of our government.

JPMorgan Chase is back to debanking. Once again, it’s not providing any explanations. And once again it’s targeting people who dare to question the Left Government/Woke Business conspiracy against liberty. At about the same time, it appears, Chase debanked, without warning, Drs. Syed Haider and Joseph Mercola. Wait, no. Not just them, but also Dr. Mercola’s employees – and his and their families. All without explanation.
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SpaceX conducts static fire test of Superheavy and its launchpad systems

10:32 am

SpaceX yesterday conducted a static fire test of Superheavy and its launchpad systems at Boca Chica.

After a couple of hours of chilling the fuel lines, filling of the liquid oxygen and liquid methane tanks aboard Booster 9 began at T-Minus 67 minutes. The liquid oxygen tank was fully filled with the liquid methane only partially filled with what was required for the test.

After a smooth countdown, Booster 9 lit all 33 Raptor engines, however, 4 shut down early during the 2.74-second duration test. The test was intended to last 5 seconds.

The new water deluge system seemed to work as intended, albeit with a very short firing of the engines. Instead of a giant dust cloud that is usually formed after a static fire test, this test created a steam cloud that dissipated fairly quickly following the test.

The premature shutdown and the even earlier shut down of four engines suggests SpaceX still has kinks it needs to work out. No surprise. It will now probably switch out those four engines, analyze the test, and do it again. It will do so partly because it needs to before the orbital test flight, and partly because it can’t do that test flight because the FAA has still not issued a launch license.

I have embedded the video of that test below the fold.
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ISRO releases first images of the Moon from Chandrayaan-3

10:23 am

The Moon as seen by Chandrayaan-3

India’s space agency ISRO yesterday released the first images taken of the Moon by Chandrayaan-3, soon after entering lunar orbit.

The picture to the right is a screen capture from the short movie the agency compiled from those images, available at the link. The pictures were taken on August 5th, during the engine burn that put the spacecraft into lunar orbit. A solar panel can be seen on the left, with the cratered lunar surface to the right.

Chandrayaan-3 is presently undergoing a series of engine burns to lower its orbit in preparation for a planned August 23rd lunar landing in the high southern latitudes of the Moon.

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Chandrayaan-3 enters lunar orbit

9:38 am


Click for interactive map.

India’s Chandrayaan-3 spacecraft today successfully entered lunar orbit, where it will spend the next week or so slowly lowering its orbit in preparation for a landing attempt by its Vikram lander on August 23rd.

Chandrayaan-3 began a roughly 30-minute burn around 9:30 a.m. Eastern, seeing the spacecraft enter an elliptical lunar orbit, the Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) stated via social media. “MOX, ISTRAC, this is Chandrayaan-3. I am feeling lunar gravity,” ISRO Tweeted. “A retro-burning at the Perilune was commanded from the Mission Operations Complex (MOX), ISTRAC, Bengaluru.”

The spacecraft will gradually alter its orbit with a burn to reduce apolune Sunday, Aug. 6. It will settle into a 100-kilometer-altitude, circular polar orbit on Aug. 17. From here, the Vikram lander will separate from the mission’s propulsion module and enter a 35 x 100-km orbit in preparation for landing.

If the landing attempt is successful, the Pragyam rover will roll off Vikram to operate for about two weeks on the lunar surface in the high southern latitudes of the Moon.

Meanwhile, the Russian lander Luna-25 will launch on August 10th. Since the rocket that launches it and engines it carries are larger than that used by Chandrayaan-3, it will likely land in Boguslawsky crater, before Vikram touches down nearby.

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Today’s blacklisted American: Pediatrician fired for raising questions about COVID jab at public meeting

2:26 pm

Renata Moon, testifying on December 7, 2022
Renata Moon, testifying on December 7, 2022.
Click to hear her testimony.

They’re coming for you next: After pediatrician Renata Moon testified at a December 7, 2022 public Capitol Hill event organized by Senator Ron Johnson (R-Wisconsin), where she raised serious and very legitimate questions about the COVID jab and the risks it might carry, she was fired as a teacher by Washington State University for daring to express such thoughts out loud.

So, what horrible things did she say at that December 2022 event?

Dr. Moon testified that she had only seen two or three cases of myocarditis, a form of heart inflammation, while practicing for more than 20 years. But after the COVID-19 vaccines were rolled out, she said, she has been seeing more cases, and heard about others from fellow doctors. “There’s clearly been a massive increase,” Dr. Moon said.

Dr. Moon also pulled out the package insert for the vaccines, or a piece of paper that typically outlines warnings, ingredients, and other information for a vaccine. The insert for the COVID-19 vaccines has no information and says, “intentionally blank,” the U.S. Food and Drug Administration has acknowledged. “How am I to give informed consent to parents when this is what I have?” Dr. Moon said.

All she did was note the obvious increase in myocarditis after the rollout of the jab, something that has now been documented repeatedly by studies (see just a few examples here, here, here, and here), while adding that though by law she as a doctor is required to provide patients with all information about the risks of a treatment, the government had intentionally denied her that information.

For this, Washington State University officials immediately reported her to the Washington Medical Commission (WMC), which at that time (and maybe even now) considers any statement expressing any skepticism about the efficacy of the COVID jab by any doctor to be “misinformation” that justifies the revocation of his or her medical license. In the university’s letter [pdf] informing her of its actions as well as warning her that it was considering firing her, it clearly indicated that it considered her testimony as her fundamental crime.
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